America's Deathcare Revolution
Why We Need a Revolution in Our Deathcare
Above: Mercury passes easily through the placenta, where it gets stored in the embryo and fetal brain. Mercury toxicity begins before birth, with over 200 chemicals including mercury found in newborn cord blood. (Photo: Google images)
“These are the worrisome facts, chronicled in the brutal history of mercury. The world’s people have a right to ask, how many more must be poisoned by mercury before nations unite to stop the toxic trade, use and release of mercury forever? Unless an alternate path is clearly articulated, increasing fossil-fuel generation, gold mining, mercury chlor-alkali production, waste disposal [including human and animal “waste”], new industrial [including crematory] and domestic uses for mercury will push the planet beyond the thresholds for living beings. Clearly, to avert a global mercury catastrophe, concrete and binding international action must be developed to coordinate and harmonize action at the local, national and regional levels in order to protect children and future generations from mercury exposure - the world’s toxic time bomb.” —from the United Nations Annual Meeting 2010 Report, “Mercury Exposure: The World’s Toxic Time Bomb”
Mercury and Modern Deathcare: Era of a new Silent Spring?
The pine tree boughs lay heavy with snow when I got a call from the hospice nurse that my mother would be dying soon. As I sat with the numbness, not fully prepared for the grief I would feel, I reflected on how her slow demise began fourteen years earlier. At that time, her doctor's office had called to tell me that mom could not locate her car in the parking lot outside the office and that she seemed to be disoriented and distressed. She was 69 and showing signs of early stage dementia. Mom would continue to live with Alzheimer’s for 14 years, in some other world than this one, for a fifth of her total lifetime. Her previous life as a music teacher had been one of health and strength, with some mild osteoarthritis emerging in mid-life, though mostly she had been a picture of health in mid-life.
What was lost was not just my mother, but the loss of a basic human right to live in a world that is free of mercury from industry. Along with radioactive pollutants which harm our DNA, mercury is in the top five most dangerous pollutants. Mom was born in 1928 on a small farm north of Cincinnati, Ohio, in the heart of American farm country. It was the beginning of a century of farming with insecticides, herbicides, and synthetic chemicals. When the Great Depression hit, my mother's family managed to survive because they had avoided buying in on expensive insecticides sold to farmers of the day. They also survived because they could feed themselves from the fruits of their small sustainable farm. What Mom loved most on their hilltop farm was the wide open sunsets and the symphony of songbirds with the sunrise. Though this farm girl could not wait to get away from the hard work of farm life, she often had a small vegetable garden when she could manage it in her juggle of life, and always put out feeders for the songbirds despite her small paycheck.
Mom felt the call of “The American Dream” and managed to graduate from the Cincinnati University School of Music, with a major in Music Education and a teaching certificate. That was the dream, to become educated and leave behind the hard work of the farm with the other 80% of Americans who were living a rural life. What they left behind was nature and what later generations would call “The Good Life.” By the 1960s the majority of Americans would become suburbanized, and by the 1990s, 80% would live in cities and would largely forget the natural world.
After a relative life of financial hardship, working as a teacher on low wages, raising two children on her own, then caregiving my father through his heart attacks, Mom was finally ready to pursue “the dream” in retirement. But her American Dream was not to be. Her two main regrets as she told me when she began to slip into dementia were that she never found the “love of her life” or the “little cottage with a garden in the backyard.” By age 71 she was experiencing enough dementia symptoms that she readily went along with our plan for a beautiful assisted-living Eldercare home. Sadly, she lived with dementia until it finally took her life. Her American Dream went up in smoke, just as she would go up in smoke ten years later with a cremation.
Who remembers “the American Dream”? It's the story of the young Afro-American woman who rises up out of Chicago poverty to become a lawyer fighting for the rights of the underserved. Or the dream of the immigrant family led by the brilliant, young father who escapes the tyranny of his home country to attend a university in his chosen field. Or the Asian woman who becomes Executive Director of a major environmental non-profit working to educate Americans about nature and care of the earth. Will they live “the good life” once retired? Or will they end up as the 1 in 10 with Alzheimer's Disease, a shadow of a human in the local dementia unit, the “land of the living dead.”
After 15 years of overseeing Mom's caregiving, moving her to expensive dementia homes with progressive levels of care to a tune of $600,000 over a decade, I was ready for my brother's help with her deathcare and funeral. In a state of exhaustion and numbness I neglected to re-read the wishes from her Will. Indeed, she had documented twenty years earlier to have the least costly and simplest care with a basic cremation. Following a 3-day candlelight vigil in the traditional old-world European custom provided by the director of the progressive Elder care home in Boulder, her body was then escorted to the city crematorium for the sum of $400 (now half the current cost of a government-paid cremation.) My brother oversaw the whole funeral within a week, and I was able to begin the grief process that had begun with her dementia.
What I did not know was the domino effect that a “simple cremation” would have. In the process of cremation, a person's body, and all mercury-amalgam dental fillings, are vaporized at 2000 degrees Fahrenheit into the air within and surrounding the crematorium. According to the EPA, there are no adequate filters for mercury or other pollutants on cremation ovens or chimneys. Now a decade since the Minamata Treaty was signed in 2013 by the U.S. and 140 other nations to eliminate mercury from industry, crematories still remain unfiltered for mercury. The major owner of Neptune and nearly 70% of the American funeral industry, Service Corp International (Texas) has done nothing to install proper mercury filters, aside from installing an extra “chimney” in some larger crematories. According to engineers, these do little to filter mercury or the other “dirty dozen” pollutants found in crematory effluent.
In 2020, Canada’s National Collaborating Center for Environmental Health (NCCEH) published a report similar to the US EPA. From a survey of existing studies, they concluded that mercury found in crematory emissions arises from the volatilization of dental amalgams in fillings and various tissues. “The pollutants of most concern are those known to be toxic to humans and which can bioaccumulate in tissues as well as fine particulate matter which can negatively impact the heart and lungs and is associated with some chronic illnesses and adverse birth outcomes.” (1) In Canada, where there is an 80% rate of cremation as of 2020, mercury emissions from crematoria contribute to a significant fraction (6%) of total mercury pollution. This is significant because of the extreme volatility of mercury in the environment, its persistence, and its potential severe health effects in humans and animals over a lifetime.
What I know now, after a decade of research, is that mercury in any form is extremely dangerous to life on earth, and mercury vapors can travel long distances and persist in our environment for at least a century. Nearly 40 years of mercury science has shown us that mercury is much more toxic than we ever knew. In fact, mercury toxicity is an ever-accumulating environmental and public health disaster, with about two million annual cremations emitting mercury vapors from people's dental fillings in their mouths and body tissues –especially the liver and brain. This is on top of additional exposures from other industries, and ever-accumulating mercury in fish that Americans eat. Although the last remaining mercury mines in America have been shut down, we continue to import products of mercury mined in China and Spain, against the guidance of the Minamata Treaty of 2013 which was established to reduce and eliminate mercury use across nations and attend to its disastrous effects worldwide. (2)
Every day, we all breathe in cremation mercury vapors, though they are odorless and invisible to the public eye. No doubt, if we were to use a mercury vapor detector instrument in a crematory we would find mercury levels are off the charts of safety, as has been found by scientists testing mercury vapors in dental offices and laboratories. In our lungs, even one molecule of mercury can attach to oxygen and water molecules, move into our blood or organs, then pass through the blood-brain barrier, causing neuro-fibrillary tangles (NFTs) and 77 other mercury reactions found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients by scientists. Is it any wonder then that Alzheimer's Disease is the #4 cause of death in America, and that we have a neurological epidemic including Multiple Sclerosis, learning disabilities (1 in 6 children) and other diseases?
Like most Americans, I did not know that cremation emits mercury vapors and many other pollutants. In retrospect, I also did not realize Mom's dental fillings were a primary cause of her dementia. Mom had mercury-amalgam dental fillings for at least 45 years of her life prior to the onset of her early dementia – sadly, the only dental fillings covered by her Teacher's Union dental insurance plan. Studies now show that mercury has a “loading period” of twenty years for chronic diseases, with severe symptoms showing up from within days or months, depending on the individual susceptibility to mercury. (3)
At a dental appointment Mom had a year before her death, the dentist said her teeth and gums were so deteriorated that it was pointless to even replace any of her mercury fillings despite our ability to pay for removal and replacement with non-mercury fillings. At $100 for each filling replacement that would be too high a cost, or so the dentist said. We also did not consider the ultimate cost to the environment or to other people's health of how those mercury fillings would ultimately be “disposed” of. (4)
Mom's “light” had gone out long ago, so what was the point? What hope is there in a life in which the light has been burnt out for nearly 15 years? What hope is there when even the specialist doctor does not know that mercury is a known cause of Alzheimer's or other neurological disease, now a known cause by scientists around the world? (5) In medical schools there are rarely any courses in Toxicology except in Immunology where environmental toxins are mentioned. Most doctors don't routinely think of mercury or heavy metals in doing a differential diagnosis or lab workup. (6)(7)
However, there is a relatively recent specialty in which toxicologists of the American Board of Metal Toxicology are now looking at evidence of mercury as a major cause of chronic disease. Dr. Robert Nash MD, Dr. Mark Hyman MD and many others have been researching and treating mercury toxicity with clinically-significant results. Dr. Nash reports that mercury causes symptoms primarily in the brain and nervous system, but also in learning disorders and kidney disease. Specialists and Emergency rooms have been giving conventional chelation therapy in the event of acute or severe mercury poisoning like EDTA, DMPS, and DMSA. These unfortunately have major side effects and that they do not bind the mercury permanently to make it inert (not dangerous) in the environment once eliminated from the body. And we have a ways to go in terms of the general practitioner testing for mercury as a cause of chronic disease. But these problems will become solutions when we learn about new technologies to sequester mercury, as discussed later.
No one wants to get Alzheimer's or any mercury-induced chronic disease. No one wants to end up in a dementia unit confined to a wheelchair. Yet this is the very threat that each and every one of us will face if we don't take steps to get mercury out of our lives and our bodies. We each need to become aware of the hazards that exist in our own lives and to understand its profound effects and health consequences. We also need to find ways to move through our shock that arises to alert us to a serious and ongoing problem in our environment. The truth is that mercury is now everywhere from human misuse, and it is particularly a problem because we humans get caught in shock, denial, or despair –emotions we are hard-wired with to cope with such realities.
You may have heard about mercury in the 1990s when the media was discussing the emerging evidence from the scientific community about mercury in dental amalgams and in our fish, water and air. Numerous articles were coming to the attention of the American public about what mercury really is. Professor Boyd Haley began his studies for the National Institutes for Health on the link between mercury and Alzheimer’s Disease, though 23 years later they would suppress his findings and cut off his funding. As Dr. Haley later posed the question: “Why would a dangerous neurotoxin like mercury be placed in the mouths of Americans just inches from the brain?” In his documentary, Evidence of Harm, Dr. Haley warns that every year our body burdens of mercury increase, with a twenty year loading period that often ends in a chronic and debilitating disease, especially Alzheimer’s Disease. (8)
We now know that mercury is the most potent, persistent organic pollutant (POP) in the federal list of “the dirty dozen,” which means it can wreak havoc in the environment for at least 40 years and, more likely, centuries. It is considered by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to be in the top three most dangerous pollutants. (9) Several government health organizations now have policies about mercury in fish consumption and dental amalgam avoidance for seven susceptible groups. (10) The EPA now requires mercury filters for the coal-burning industry, and crematories must follow suit under the Clean Air Act.
Unlike most chemicals, such as herbicidal sprays that can decompose over three years or more, mercury cannot break down in the environment or in our bodies. Even more disruptive than DDT, mercury alters our cellular DNA and mitochondrial DNA. (11) It disrupts the reproduction of many species, including our own. (12) Most disturbing is the fact that mercury is biomagnifying at 10x7 power, meaning one molecule can quickly proliferate in a watery system 10 million times, as has been shown in studies of mercury deposits in elephant seals and other higher mammals.
What’s the best choice for mercury-free, environmentally-responsible deathcare in 21st-century America?
The best solution for our deathcare lies in creating many more natural, conservation and restoration burial preserves, the best available solution in natural deathcare at this time. For at least a dozen critical reasons, the natural burial movement can help alleviate numerous problems we face in the 21st century, including the deathcare industry crisis and the mercury problem. The best possible choices in mercury-sequestering deathcare are GBC-certified conservation burials and restoration burials, or a rural home natural burial if zoning in your area permits it. Second best choice is a GBC-certified natural cemetery, and third choice is a certified “hybrid” cemetery burial. Some communities are working to rehabilitate an historic cemetery, and these can be GBC-certified as Hybrid also. Because of the severe health and environmental consequences of mercury, certified conservation or restoration burial preserves are the best choice for human disposition, in which mercury is buried and sequestered in a legal easement for the earth, just as the earth has sequestered it for a millennium.
Notes
(1) Environmental Protection Agency. “Mercury In Dental Amalgams” 2010.
Available at: https://www.epa.gov/mercury/dentalamalgam.html#crematoria
and https://www3.epa.gov/ttnchie1/old/ap42/ch13/s06/related/woodlawnvol1.pdf
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-09/documents/volume8.pdf
Juliette O’Keeffe, “Crematoria Emissions and Air Quality Impacts” NCCEH, 2020:
https://ncceh.ca/documents/field-inquiry/crematoria-emissions-and-air-quality-impacts
I did find an EPA report “Control Technology Options for Human Crematories” 2012, but the Webpage says the report “cannot be found”, when accessed in 2022. See also: Smith TO, et al. The potential dangers of medical devices with current cremation practices. Eur Geriatr Med. 2012;3(2):97-102. Available from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878764912000320.
(2) Bernhoft, Robin A. “Mercury Toxicity and Treatment: A Review of the Literature” Journal of Environmental and Public Health. January 2012.
(3) Haley, Boyd, E. “The relationship of the toxic effects of mercury to exacerbation of the medical condition classified as Alzheimer’s disease.” Medical Veritas Vol. 4, 1510–1524, 2007. See also Lorscheider, F et al. “Retrograde Degeneration of Neurite Membrane Structural Integrity of Nerve Growth Cones Following In Vitro Exposure To Mercury.” NeuroReport. Vol. 12(4), 733-737, 2001. A landmark study in 20 years of research conducted at the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine has demonstrated that trace amounts of mercury can cause the type of damage to nerves that is characteristic of the damage found in Alzheimer’s Disease. The level of mercury exposure is consistent with those levels found in humans with mercury/silver amalgam dental fillings. The exposure to mercury caused the formation of “neurofibrillary tangles,” which are one of the two diagnostic markers for Alzheimer’s Disease. The scientists found that other metals, including aluminum, did not cause the damage. Previous research has shown that mercury can cause the formation of over 77 other chemical changes as found in AD. The research, published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, is accompanied by a video visual presentation of the effect. Utilizing digital time-lapse photography, this video shows rapid damage to the nerve cells after introduction of minute amounts of mercury. A Youtube video documents these changes.
(4) International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT) Position Paper against Dental Mercury Amalgam Fillings for Medical and Dental Practitioners, Dental Students, Dental Patients, and Policy Makers Originally Released on April 16, 2013 First Update on March 2, 2016; Second Update on July 23, 2019.
(5) Haley, ibid.
(6) Lorscheider, FL, Vimy M, Summers, A. “Mercury Exposure From ‘Silver’ Tooth Fillings: Emerging Evidence Questions a Traditional Dental Paradigm” Fed of Amer Societies for Experimental Biology Vol. 9, 1995.
(7) Park, Jung Duck and Zheng Wei. “Human Exposure and Health Effects of Inorganic and Elemental Mercury” Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health” Vol. 45. No. 6, 2012.
(8) https:iaomt.org/resources/dental-mercury facts/mercury-poisoning-symptoms-dental-amalgam. See also Dr. Haley, “Evidence of Harm” documentary, available on Youtube.
(9) https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/mercury Article “1.4 How can mercury enter and leave my body?” available from: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=112&tid=24
“When you breathe in mercury vapors, however, most (about 80%) of the mercury enters your bloodstream directly from your lungs, and then rapidly goes to other parts of your body, including the brain and kidneys… When metallic mercury enters the brain, it is readily converted to an inorganic form and is "trapped" in the brain for a long time... Most of the metallic mercury will accumulate in your kidneys, but some metallic mercury can also accumulate in the brain.”
(10) FDA. gov. September 24, 2020 policy available at:
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-issues-recommendations-certain-high-risk-groups-regarding-mercury-containing-dental-amalgam. See also FDA, September 2019 review “Epidemiological Evidence On the Adverse Health Effects Reported in Relation to Mercury from Dental Amalgam: Systematic Literature Review (2010-Present) (143 pages) See also: Haley, Boyd, E. “The relationship of the toxic effects of mercury to exacerbation of the medical condition classified as Alzheimer’s disease.” Medical Veritas Vol. 4, 1510–1524, 2007. Siblerud RL et al. “A Hypothesis That Mercury May be an Etiological Factor in Alzheimer's Disease” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Dec. 2019.